Thursday, July 24, 2008

Yesterday I was reading and ran into a new twist on goal setting and achieving anything you want out of life: UNDERACHIEVE!

You heard that right, live your dreams and make huge goals happen by underachieving. Let me explain with an example. Let's say one of your goals is to be healthy & energetic (who doesn't want that???) The average person would go about it like this - especially at New Year's Resolution time:

Goal: become healthy and energetic.How to achieve it: eat only bran flakes and wheat grass in the morning, an apple for lunch, and a salad and 4 ounces of chicken or fish for supper and work out 2 hours a day for 6 days a week.

What happens with this? Your second wheat grass and bran flake breakfast or the first night your friends want to go out to see a movie with you after work, you missed your goal, your plan is shot, and it is back to life as usual.

Here's the underachiever way:

Goal: become healthy and energeticHow to achieve it: work out 10 minutes 3 times a week. Eat 1 serving of vegetables a day.

Chances are much, much better you can hit those goals, feel good about yourself and most likely hit some bigger and better goals (I worked out 10 minutes! Why not go nuts and shoot for 20??)

Instead of setting big crazy goals and try to go from not doing anything to move toward your goals to doing everything you possibly can, set little goals and take it one baby step at a time. Be consistent, move toward achieving your goals, and it can happen!

This idea came from a slightly unexpected source: Robert Kiyosaki's book Cashflow Quadrant. This little gem of advice was crammed in there with financial advice along with how and why you'd want to be a business owner or investor. He gives credit to Raymond Aaron talk called "Goals: Crossing the Goal Line" for the idea.